Saturday, September 20, 2008

Yun Criticizes Bernanke & Media on Negative Stories on Hounsing

The reason for that gap, in Yun's view, is eroding consumer confidence largely caused by negativity, both in the media and elsewhere, about the market. Yun, by contrast, is more optimistic, believing the housing slump is nearly over.

"The winter months are always weaker (for home sales), but this winter will be better than last winter," he said. "There is this great pent-up demand that cannot be held back any further."

Events of the last few days might make such economic optimism seem far-fetched. And even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has predicted continuing housing market weakness.

Yun, in fact, on Monday rebuked Bernanke for such predictions, saying if it's inappropriate to forecast stock or oil prices, "it is inappropriate to comment on home prices, because people react to that."

To applause from his Realtor audience, Yun said he had made that point in a letter to Bernanke.

And he rued that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is also issuing more negative housing market predictions.

7 comments:

Without completely discrediting myself in the process ... Dr. Yun has a point.

Taking his comments in a vacuum and looking beyond his track record, he is right. Our government has done a pretty terrible job of predicting anything and they have no business stepping into the private sector - whether that's housing, the stock market or oil prices.

This is one of the few times I have ever agreed with Yun, but it's worth nothing that in this one instance (that gov't should stay the he*l out of the prediction business).

What Yun doesn't seem to be aware of, is that Bernanke needs to put the fear of falling housing prices and economic collapse into the minds of congress to get them to get off their butts and do something.

Yun is supposed to look at statistics, so how can he say that we are recovering, or that this Winter will be better than last. It's a fairytale. House prices will continue to fall as long as inventory, which is at 3M new homes and condos that are vacant, remains above 1 M. This will be years, not months, and guess what?? It will be when house prices revert to '99 or 2000 levels--remember the affordability issue???

The number of new home listings appear to be woefully - and purposely - underestimated.

Found elsewhere:

'Personally I am familiar with "on the pinks" which refers to essentially completed homes that haven't asked for a final inspection from the city. When you look up massive developments like Riverpark in Oxnard list a half dozen units available for sale but once in the sales office it is clear that dozens of similar models are equally available for immediate sale.'